


tides of a moment

by sepiacigarettes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, During Canon, Galran Culture (Voltron), Grief/Mourning, Hair Braiding, Hair Washing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-22 17:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22786282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepiacigarettes/pseuds/sepiacigarettes
Summary: “Your mama,” his Pop continued, “she always wanted your hair long. In her culture, they believed your hair was connected to your life energy or somethin’.”So Keith grew his out after that, and years later, covered in dust and starlight, Shiro brushed his fingers through Keith’s fringe.“You’ve got the desert in your hair,” he laughed.In which Keith loses himself after the Kerberos mission failure, discovers where he comes from, and finds his way back to Shiro.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 111
Kudos: 458
Collections: Sheithlentines 2020





	tides of a moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tealady19](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tealady19/gifts).



> Happy Sheithlentines, Stephanie 😊I took your really lovely prompt for non-sexual intimacy and braiding and came up with this. Hope you enjoy! ❤️🖤
> 
> Eternal thanks as always to my other half [Christie](https://twitter.com/appetixing) for beta-ing this

> I’ve seen faces I may never see again
> 
> I’ve been places I never could have dreamt
> 
> I’ve touched hands with those who touched me
> 
> Seen the marks, the skeleton keys
> 
> I found peace in a foreign atonement
> 
> I lost myself in tides of a moment
> 
> I’ve loved where I’ve been
> 
> But my heart’s where I’m going
> 
> Don’t want to be here
> 
> Don’t want to be here without you (I don’t want to go alone)
> 
> — Anberlin, _Atonement_

— K —

When the Kerberos mission fails, Keith is sleeping. Earlier, after dinner time, he’d finished both his physics and biology homework a week earlier than they were due, because he promised Shiro to stay on top of his grades as long as Shiro came home to him in one piece. Then he put on the playlist that Shiro had left for him, like he’d done every night since the mission had launched, and went to bed.

He wakes up to the Garrison in turmoil, to the rest of his dormmates immediately asking if he’s heard the news. Then they show him the reports on their datapads, the Holt’s pictures next to Shiro’s, and the flashing text underneath it.

For a moment Keith just sits there, mute, as they bombard him with questions, as the text keeps flashing at him. It’s like a pickaxe, the way it chips at him.

_Chip, chip, chip._

The questions don’t stop. They get bigger, louder, like a cacophony of birds. Keith gathers the pieces of himself from the bed, ignoring their words. He doesn’t say anything to them, just takes his uniform and wanders out the door to the showers.

Keith’s Pop used to say some of the men he worked with were ghosts; that after so many years of fighting fires and losing people, their spirits left them, but their bodies stayed on Earth. Keith feels like that as he walks down the hall, like he could float through the walls, like he could step off the edge of the Garrison roof and keep going to the horizon.

He could keep going until he falls off the edge of the world.

It’s only once the shower started, once Keith is in the stall by himself, that he finally lets his mind settle on the news they threw at him.

_Pilot error. Mission failure. No contact made. Presumed dead._

Water rains down on Keith’s clothes, because he didn’t take them off. It soaks through his pyjama top, too wet, too cold, and Keith feels the shudders of it all the way up his spine, until he’s raising his shaking hand to his mouth. The tiles he’s staring at are blurring together, like the mess of thoughts in his mind.

_Pilot error._

There’s so much water, in Keith’s clothes, in his eyes, in his mouth.

_Mission failure._

Keith’s knees begin to tremble, from the temperature, from the sinking sensation in his chest, until he’s forced to lower himself to the floor.

_No contact made._

He thinks of sunsets and all the times he spent chasing after Shiro on their hoverbikes. He looks at the walls of his stall like maybe he can burn the image of Shiro into them, like he can bring him back with that.

_Presumed dead._

The _thing_ that tears itself from the walls of his lungs is thick and heavy. It crawls up his throat and Keith feels each and every hook in his windpipe, unable to stop it until it burns behind his eyeballs, presses against his tongue.

He opens his mouth and lets it fall.

— K —

When they hold the memorial, there isn’t a body. There wasn’t one for Keith’s Pop, either. They couldn’t bring anything back from that fire, they couldn’t bring back his Pop.

In a way it was a good thing. Keith had been to one other funeral in his lifetime, for one of his Pop’s station’s ex-firefighters, and it had been an open casket. The man’s skin was waxy, and he looked like he was sleeping, but Keith knew it was not the case.

It was the only dead body Keith had seen. He didn’t want to see his Pop’s.

He didn’t want to hold his hand, to see his eyes closed, to touch his cheek and be fooled into thinking his Pop was just sleeping.

So he’s glad there isn’t a body for Shiro, either.

The ceremony is held on a Wednesday. The entire Garrison is there, the media too. Keith sits with the rest of his cadet cohort as the top brass deliver speeches. It’s supposed to be in memoriam of the three people they lost, but Keith wishes they didn’t hold the damned thing. He wishes he didn’t have to listen to them talking about the Holts and their research; wishes he didn’t have to listen to Shiro’s accolades and accomplishments.

 _That’s my best friend,_ he thinks as they drone on.

The uniform is too tight, the collar feels like a noose. He feels like he’s suffocating the whole time.

It doesn’t change when he stumbles out of the room, doesn’t relent when he scrabbles at the buttons of his jacket, desperate for air.

He barely sees where he’s going, fights his way through the hoards of people to the rooftop. He used to sneak here after curfew and stargaze with Shiro. The desert before him is endless. The sky above him is brilliant and blue. Keith falls to his knees in the dust, eyes welling up as the wind blows and the sun shines and everything keeps ticking over, like nothing wrong has happened, like he isn’t in the exact spot he used to sit with his best friend who isn’t here anymore.

That _thing_ from before is back, the one that clawed its way out of him in the shower. It fell onto the floor and filled the whole stall until it was so heavy and thick, Keith thought he would die there. He thought there was no way to come back from that, from such a deep ocean of sorrow.

But maybe he didn’t leave, maybe he’s still at the bottom of it, so far down it’s impossible to see the light above and it’s all he knows now.

It would be the only way to explain the crushing sensation despite the gaping hole in his chest.

The sun shines. The wind blows. Keith _sobs._

His hair sticks to his forehead, gets caught in his open mouth. It’s so much longer than when his Pop died.

Keith used to be grateful for its length. He used to look at himself in the mirror, wondering how much of his mother’s face was in his own. Were her eyes the same shape? Did she have the same jawline? Was her hair long?

When Keith asked, his Pop drawled, “At the back it was,” as he ran his hand through Keith’s hair. “The front were more like yours. Shorter. Spikier.”

Keith remembers running a hand through his fringe, trying to imagine it.

“Your mama,” his Pop continued, “she always wanted your hair long. In her culture, they believed your hair was connected to your life energy or somethin’.”

So Keith grew his out after that, and years later, covered in dust and starlight, Shiro brushed his fingers through Keith’s fringe.

“You’ve got the desert in your hair,” he laughed.

He’d only done it to get the sand off Keith’s forehead, and yet Keith’s heart stuttered to a stop when Shiro pulled gently on a lock of his fringe.

That was his favourite thing to do after that. Every time they were together, every time Shiro made him laugh, whether it was from cracking a joke, or tickling him, he’d always reach out and tug on Keith’s hair.

And right now, that’s all Keith wants.

He wants Shiro here, sitting in the dust with him and making him laugh. He wants Shiro to run his fingers through Keith’s hair, wants to see the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he musses Keith’s fringe. Keith has always loved the way Shiro’s smile overtakes his face. He loved everything Shiro did.

But he isn’t here, and like the _thing_ in the shower, the words are back too.

_Pilot error. Mission failure. No contact made. Presumed dead._

Tears spill down Keith’s cheeks, wet and hot. Blood roars in his ears. His hair is still in his eyes and Keith suddenly hates it.

He doesn’t want to go downstairs. He doesn’t want to leave this rooftop. He doesn’t want to see the television screens flashing words at him about the mission and memorial. He doesn’t want to go back to a Garrison where there’s no Shiro. 

_You promised you’d come back to me,_ Keith thinks.

Because Shiro did, he told Keith before the launch to keep his head down, to get good grades, to not miss him too much—as if Keith wasn’t completely _bereft_ at the thought of a year without Shiro. Keith just agreed because he’d do anything Shiro asked of him, and let Shiro rub a strand of hair between his fingers.

Keith hates it. He _hates_ it.

He grew it out for his mom, because his Pop always used to say that’s who Keith looked like, and both of them are gone. Shiro used to play with it, and he isn’t here either.

He wants it _gone._

He barely thinks.

Instead he gathers it in one hand and unsheathes his Pop’s blade.

The first cut goes deep. The moment the tension on his hair goes slack, Keith looks down, opens his palm. The severed piece is stark against his skin.

 _What are you doing?_ he wonders, but he doesn’t stop. He keeps hacking at his hair. The blade is sharp. It does the job. The locks fall next to him.

Sometime later, long enough that the hair and the blade lie forgotten on the dusty Garrison rooftop, Keith curls into himself. No one has come to find him, and no one will. Those that are alive are all focused on the memorial and the media.

Keith curls tighter, feeling small.

The back of his neck is cold.

— K —

When Shiro comes back to Earth, his fringe is white. He’s bigger, even more so than when he left for Kerberos, and it takes Keith some time to dig through the wardrobe for some of his Pop’s old clothes that will fit him.

Shiro watches him quietly as he searches, having woken up when they got him inside the shack. He hasn’t said anything yet, which suits Keith just fine.

He’s still reeling from everything, from turning Shiro’s face to him, from the vehicle chase.

When the clothes are placed on the mattress next to Shiro, he finally speaks. “Here. I think these might fit.”

Shiro looks impossibly sad, which makes Keith’s insides feel like they’re rotting away. “Thanks, Keith.”

A year apart and yet Keith still looks at Shiro and feels like the puzzle pieces of him are finally slotting together again after being torn apart. There are so many things he wants to ask Shiro, like the hair colour or the strange clothing or the new robot arm. The scar across his nose hurts to look at, chips at Keith like all those months ago when he woke up and everyone asked if he knew Shiro had died.

Except it’s a year later and Keith is even more fragile and desperate than he was back then. Time heals all wounds, they say, but Keith doesn’t even think he began to stitch himself together after the Kerberos mission failure. How could he, when Shiro was the one who held all the threads of him?

“Shiro,” Keith whispers. “What…?”

He can’t even say it.

Shiro says nothing either, but Keith sees the way his fingers tremble as he pulls the ragged shirt off. Then he turns his back to Keith, bowing his head. Keith understands, remembers doing this for Shiro once or twice after Shiro’s test flights. He reaches out, finds the seam at the nape of Shiro’s neck.

It’s a new sort of hurt then, the one that overcomes Keith as he pulls the zipper down, as Shiro’s back is revealed. The other times Keith had done this, he’d taken note of the freckles and moles scattered across Shiro’s shoulders. Now, he only sees the scars.

Keith nearly chokes on the pain of it, has to bite down on his tongue as he fumbles for the shirt he found.

“Thanks,” Shiro says quietly, turning to face him again as he frees his arms from the bodysuit.

There are more scars on his chest, slicing across his ribs, and Keith almost wants to touch them, to see if they’re real. He hates the images flitting through his brain, of Shiro alone and scared and being hurt over and over again.

“No problem,” Keith manages, feeling like he’s a moment away from bursting into tears and wishing his eyes would stop stinging.

The last thing Shiro needs is _that._

 _Who hurt you?_ He wants to ask. _Who dared touch you like that?_

But it’s been too much of an adrenaline-filled night to lay out such heavy questions, so Keith keeps his mouth shut. Shiro continues dressing in silence and lets Keith stay with him, and it’s humbling, to be allowed to see Shiro take himself apart like this and put himself back together.

Keith wonders what he did to deserve it.

When he’s done, Shiro curls onto the mattress. A sigh bleeds from his lips onto the comforter.

“Can I stay?” Keith says, hushed, not wanting to break the blanket of calm.

Shiro looks at him, and no, Keith still isn’t used to the scar on his face.

_Who hurt you?_

“Only if you want to,” Shiro says, which is so typical of him. Even now, after rescuing him, he still thinks Keith is doing everything for him out of obligation.

“I want to,” Keith insists, crossing to sit on the floor next to the bed, back against the bedside table. He wants to be as close as he can without encroaching on Shiro’s space.

Shiro smiles at that, and it’s still soft and sad at the edges, still matches his wet eyes somewhat, but it’s a smile, a glimmer of happiness. He reaches out, to touch, Keith realises, before he seems to remember that his arm is now metal and robotic and he stops himself.

“It’s okay,” Keith nearly pleads, feeling like he’ll keep rotting away if Shiro doesn’t touch him. “It’s okay.”

And it’s slow, but Shiro does.

He twirls Keith’s hair around his index finger, still with that sad smile. The familiarity of the gesture unlocks a wave of nostalgia in Keith and he only just manages to keep the tears from spilling down his cheeks.

Shiro just keeps twirling. “You kept it long,” he says, hushed. “I missed doing this.”

“I missed _you,”_ Keith whispers.

Shiro meets his eyes again, tugging on Keith’s fringe before brushing it from Keith’s eyes. “I missed you too,” he answers.

Dawn will be upon them in a couple of hours, and the other three are napping in the living room next to Keith’s corkboard of theories. There will be time to talk about everything else waiting on the tip of his tongue, but for now it seems right for Keith to rest his head on the side of the bed, next to Shiro’s.

Shiro tugs Keith's hair one more time before withdrawing and tucking his robotic hand under the pillow. That will have to be another obstacle to face in the morning. For now, they can sleep.

— K —

When Keith finds out who he is, when he learns he has Galra blood in him, he’s barely lucid. There was no way to tell the time during his trials, but after he awakens his blade, after they’re back at the Castle of Lions and Kolivan has been taken by Allura to discuss the battle plan further, Keith feels like he’s been awake for three days.

“Whoa,” Shiro says, rushing to catch him when Keith sways, adrenaline finally wearing off to make way for the sudden exhaustion rushing through his body. “Hey, let’s get you to the healing pods.”

Keith shakes his head in protest, fighting weakly. The last place he wants to be right now is trapped in a pod.

“Okay,” Shiro says quickly. “Okay, we don’t have to. But you still need to bathe.”

“Sure,” Keith slurs.

Shiro is a good guy. He spends a fair amount of time trying to hobble with Keith in the direction of his room, but Keith’s legs aren’t listening to him and he’s struggling to keep his eyes open.

“I’ve got you,” Shiro mutters, and then the world spins as he hauls Keith into his arms.

Keith groans as the movement makes him dizzy, slumping against Shiro’s hold. He doesn’t know where they are when he’s eventually laid down, but the light that hits his eyes causes him to whimper and try to curl away from it.

“Hey, shush, shush,” Shiro says, hands flitting over Keith’s body to stop him from rolling. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Cool air spills over Keith’s skin as Shiro peels him out of the Blades suit, a balm to his sore body. He feels exactly like he’s been fighting for forty vargas. Every movement causes a new ache to bloom somewhere in him.

“Can you sit up for me?” Shiro says, voice muffled and distorted like Keith is underwater.

Maybe he got hit around the head harder than he thought.

The water rising around him is a surprise, and so is the warmth of it. Keith’s skin has broken out into goosebumps from being exposed to the room, so the change is welcome. So too is Shiro’s warm hand upon his shoulder.

Awareness comes to him in dregs. Keith doesn’t know how long it takes, but it’s long enough for Shiro to change the water after it gets cold.

When Keith cracks his eyes open, he finds Shiro leaning against the tub, watching him while his finger twirls in the water.

“There you are,” Shiro singsongs, flicking water at him.

Keith shies away from it, dragging his wrinkled fingers through the soap bubbles instead. The water is sparkly and smells like sugar and some kind of memory, a good one. Keith still doesn’t understand Altean magic but it permeates everything in this Castle, from the lights to the droid to the pods to the water he’s sitting in.

“How are you feeling?” Shiro asks, still tracing circles. He’s changed out of his flight suit into sweatpants and a black shirt that looks so good over his broad chest.

“’Mazing,” Keith mumbles sarcastically, which makes Shiro chuckle.

“How are you _really_ feeling?”

Inexplicably, Keith begins to cry.

He doesn’t know what for. His whole body aches and stings with the cuts and bruises he gained from the trials, but somehow this feels worse, like someone has ripped open the fabric of him and is running their hands along the torn seams.

Each touch _burns._

“Oh,” Shiro says. _“Hey.”_

He gets to his feet, climbs into the bath with Keith, clothes and socks and all. He doesn’t seem to care about the water, doesn’t say anything as he hooks his head over Keith’s shoulder and his arms fold around Keith’s shaking shoulders.

“Sorry,” Keith hiccups pathetically, and Shiro makes a noise of protest before cradling Keith’s head.

There must be a wound there because it stings when Shiro’s thumb brushes over it accidentally.

“Sorry,” Shiro apologises at the wounded sound Keith makes, shifting his grip. “Better?”

Keith nods.

“Good,” Shiro soothes, fingers threading carefully between Keith’s hair at the nape of his neck and combing through it. “You’re okay.”

He’s not, not by a couple or so hundred miles, but all Keith can do is turn his face into Shiro’s neck and stay there as his mind catches up.

Galra.

Like the people they’ve been fighting against all this time. Like the ones who cut Shiro to pieces, who made him into their war machine, who gave him nightmares and scars.

“‘M sorry,” Keith rattles out, a fresh wave starting in him.

Shiro is soaked from the bathwater and Keith’s tears, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t complain, just stays there and lets Keith cling to him as he sets that horrible thing inside him free. Keith remembers how it fell onto the floor in the shower when he first let it out instead of burying it the way he did when his Pop died, and now isn’t quite the same, but it’s too similar at the same time.

 _Make it stop,_ he thinks, splintering.

“It’s okay,” Shiro hums, drawing back only to press the side of his face to Keith’s. “You’re okay, I’ve got you. I promise.”

“Shiro,” Keith whines, still breaking. “I’m _sorry.”_

“Shush,” Shiro coaxes. “You’re safe here.”

He sits back on his haunches then, and it’s stupid how breathtaking he is like this, in wet clothes with his hair falling into his eyes. He’s a dream, the best one Keith could ever be graced with.

“I didn’t know,” Keith bites out, reminded of the first time he had cough syrup and it burned his mouth and throat and he thought he couldn’t taste anything more bitter. How wrong he was. “I didn’t know—”

“Don’t,” Shiro shakes his head. “Don’t think about it. This doesn’t change who you are.”

“But—”

“Not to me,” Shiro interrupts. “This doesn’t change what you mean to me.”

It doesn’t stop the breaking within Keith, either.

But it slows it, somewhat, enough that Keith feels brave enough to dig his fingers into the fabric of Shiro’s shirt as he keeps shuddering. Shiro lets him, murmuring things into his ear that Keith tries not to latch onto. He doesn’t deserve the nice words Shiro is showering upon him.

Especially now that he knows what he is.

_Galra._

“Don’t think about it,” Shiro repeats. “Think about this instead,” and he pets Keith’s hair, nuzzles his cheek. “Just this.”

Fingertips trail the length of his spine.

Up, down.

Up, down.

Up. 

Down.

When the worst of it seems to have passed, Keith feels even more drained than before.

“Fuck,” he complains, suddenly feeling like laughing instead. “I’m a mess.”

“No you’re not,” Shiro says. “But your hair is.” And he shifts around in the tub, pulling Keith to sit between his legs. “Come on,” Shiro coaxes as he brushes Keith’s hair from his eyes and pushes it behind his ears. “Let’s get this bird’s nest untangled.”

There’s an assortment of pumps along the wall, something that Keith has in his room too but has never used. Shiro is clearly acquainted though, because he goes straight to one on the left and squirts green gel onto his palm.

It’s cold in Keith’s hair but Shiro’s fingers massaging his scalp make it worth it, so much that Keith forgets for a moment why they’re here in the first place and thinks he could melt into Shiro’s touch.

“Should have tied this up when you were fighting,” Shiro remarks, easing out a tangle with care, but Keith still winces.

It would have been a good idea, in hindsight.

“Probably,” Keith mutters.

Shiro snorts, like this is a usual occurrence for them, like it isn’t strange for Keith to be sitting between Shiro’s legs and letting him wash his hair because he’s so exhausted he can barely lift his hand out of the water.

“Definitely,” Shiro retorts, getting to the end of one section and moving to the next.

Keith rests his cheek on his knee, too tired to banter properly. He wants to fall asleep and not be woken up until the end of the war. Maybe forever, actually. Sleeping forever sounds nice.

“Pop liked it long,” he says, lulled by Shiro’s hands. “’S why I never cut it.”

Shiro’s movements pause for a moment, before he keeps pulling them through Keith’s hair. The substance he’s using now is pink and silky and doing wonders at taming the mop on Keith’s head.

“I like it long like this,” Shiro says. “I can’t imagine you with short hair.”

That’s fair. There are photos, back at the shed, of when Keith was a toddler. He’s ruddy-cheeked and covered in sand and mud in nearly all of them, but his hair is short, just like his Pop’s. There’s the time afterwards too, when Keith fled the Garrison and returned to the desert, when he had to grow his hair back out.

But not many people have seen Keith without long hair.

“My mom…” Keith starts, wondering if he’s going to be able to finish the sentence. Each word feels like a knife as it crawls up his throat. “Pop told me our hair was connected to our life energy.”

“Your quintessence,” Shiro fills in the blanks.

Keith nods miserably. “My culture.”

The water sloshes around them as Shiro tips Keith’s head back and directs the stream over him. He doesn’t say anything to placate or reassure Keith, just cards his fingers through Keith’s hair to check for any residual tangles.

“Much better,” he says, sounding all too pleased with himself.

Keith can’t remember the last time someone took care of him like this. He definitely never had anyone digging their thumbs into the sore points of his shoulders, but Shiro does, finding the tender spots immediately. Keith tips forward and groans into his knees, wondering if maybe he would have been better off to jump into a healing pod instead of subjecting Shiro to all of this.

But it feels too good to be the sole focus of Shiro’s attention. Keith craves it like sunlight most days. Right now, wanting Shiro’s attention feels a little more like being desperate for oxygen.

The water is tepid by the time Shiro decides to stop, squeezing Keith’s arms and tucking his chin over his shoulder.

“You okay?” he asks, oblivious to Keith’s internal angsting.

“Yeah,” Keith forces out. “‘M okay.”

“Good.” Shiro gives him another hug, then climbs out of the bath. Water splashes onto the tiled floor and his clothes are clinging to every single one of his muscles.

Keith’s mouth is suddenly dry.

The _best_ dream.

“I’ll let you finish up,” Shiro says, stretching his arms above his head and rolling his shoulders before fetching a towel. “I’ll be outside when you’re ready.” Shiro pauses, hand on the door jamb. “Hey, y’know…you being part-Galra? It doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

“No?”

“No,” Shiro says. “I mean, you’re you, Galra or not. You’re the best person I know.”

“Shiro.”

“I’m serious. You being Galra doesn’t make you inherently evil.”

“But—”

Shiro cuts him off with, “Just…just think about it.” And with that, he turns to leave.

“Shiro?” Keith says, feeling very small now it’s just him in the giant tub.

“Hm?”

Keith wishes he could do more than stare at the murky water, but he isn’t brave enough. “Thank you.”

“Sure, Keith. Always.”

— K —

When Keith is with the Blades, he learns a lot of things.

The first is how to fight with his awakened blade. Keith is out of his depth surrounded by Galra so it’s comforting to be able to strip everything back to the bare bones of fighting. It’s muscle memory for Keith to strike and parry, to fall into the push and pull. He smells like sweat and metal at the end of each quintant, scrubs it away in the shower and stares at the pruning skin of his fingers, thinking of how different he looks to the rest of them.

He doesn’t have markings, doesn’t have the purple hue that most of them do, doesn’t have pointed ears or yellow eyes or anything to tell him he fits in with the Blades.

All he has is the blade he straps to his side every morning.

The second thing he learns is how to swear. After the fourth or fifth time of hearing Ilun and Vrek toss furious words at each other as they spar, Keith turns to Regris and asks, “What are they saying?”

Regris coughs, running a hand over his nose, something that Keith has noticed Regris does when he’s thinking. “I do not know how best to translate them to Common. But they are not nice words.”

“Oh,” Keith says, immediately understanding.

Ilun and Vrek swear at each other a lot, which makes Keith think that perhaps they hate each other. Quite the opposite, it turns out, when Keith walks past them in the mess and sees Vrek licking food from Ilun’s fingers. He never thought he’d see the two of them act courteously to each other.

He throws his first curse at Antok when he gets crushed to the sparring deck. It’s a hacking kind of word, one he only heard fall from Vrek’s mouth once. But Keith’s head is still swimming from Antok shoving it into the floor, his arms are twisted behind his back enough for him to think they could dislocate, and all the breath is gone from his lungs.

He doesn’t have anything left in him to think, just bundles up all the vitriol and hurt in his chest and hurls the word at Antok.

Nothing happens for a moment. Keith’s heart pounds, sweat drips down his nose. His hair is in his eyes, plastered to his forehead.

Then Antok _laughs,_ a deep sound that rumbles through his body and causes Keith to vibrate underneath him.

“Little one,” Antok says amusedly, which tells Keith that maybe he isn’t about to get his lights knocked out for swearing at his superior. The Marmora differ from the Galra of the Empire in many ways, but they put a lot of emphasis on honour and respect. And here Keith is, tearing it all down.

“Who taught you such a word?”

“No one,” Keith grits out, wishing Antok would let him go so he can get some oxygen back into his bloodstream. His arms are going numb. “I taught myself.”

“Aren't you clever?” Antok says, still humoured.

Keith gets another pounding into the sparring mat as punishment, but it seems fair, and afterwards, Antok helps him up.

“Watch your words,” he says. “We are family here, but not everyone will react as graciously.”

Keith ponders the conversation afterwards, tracing the curse into the fogged up glass of the mirror.

The third thing he learns is how to braid his hair.

It’s long enough to warrant tying back, and after Shiro’s comment about doing so when fighting, Keith begins to.

The other Blades have hair coloured blue or lavender or white. Only Keith’s is jet black.

A lot of them comment on it, but it isn’t until they’re walking to the mess one day that someone dares to touch. Keith is busy being taught how to say the equivalent of ‘I want candy’ when Zhul’s fingers curl around a lock of hair, and the familiarity of the action shocks him all the way through.

Only Shiro has ever touched him like that.

“Sorry,” Zhul says, backing off immediately.

The Blades favour contact, a tactile race by nature. Keith shares a dormitory with them where they all have their own bed but it isn’t unusual for him to look over and see two or three of them sleeping together.

Regris told him it reminded them of when they were kits. A lot of them are like Keith; they lost their families to war, never knew anything like a bond until they came to the Blades. It makes Keith think of his whirlwind few months with the other paladins; Lance can’t ever shut his mouth and Pidge and Hunk always ramble about nerdy stuff, but there are happy moments too, ones that make the loneliness within Keith not so sharp.

So he says, “it's fine,” to stop Zhul from thinking the contact is unwanted, because it isn’t, and then he explains, “just wasn't expecting it.”

Zhul’s finger brushes the end of Keith's fringe again. “I was just curious why your hair is not braided.”

Next to Zhul, Svetan nods. “It should be, since you have grown it this long, little one.”

They all call him that. It’s because everyone here got some kind of gene combination that didn’t immediately make them tiny and breakable like Keith.

“What do you mean?”

Taking Keith’s earlier reassurances to Zhul to heart, Vrek combs his claws carefully through Keith’s hair where it’s folded over his shoulder. “To us Galra, it is a sign of strength to have long hair. We braid it like ropes to emphasise this strength.”

“Different patterns mean different things,” Ilun explains. “Status, rank, tribe. The braids signify our connection to our quintessence, to each other.”

“I didn’t know,” Keith says.

It’s becoming a regular occurrence to see the Blades shaking their head at him as he reveals how little he knows about his heritage. Ilun’s mouth turns down at the corners, while Svetan’s eyes grow sad.

“We can teach you,” Zhul intercepts. “Unfortunately not your tribe or family pattern, but you should learn the basics, at least.”

Keith agrees before he can talk himself out of it.

Like all Blade activities, learning to braid takes a group of them. Keith sits obediently as the others brush his hair and then take turns coaching him. It feels a little like when Shiro was teaching Keith to play guitar. His fingers cramped from being bent at different angles, but eventually they got up to Keith strumming the first few lines of one of the old love songs he used to hear at the shack.

“And then under," Ilun instructs while Keith clumsily follows. “And then over. Good.”

The braid is wonky at best, but the others clap their hands together.

“Practice makes perfect,” Regris assures him.

 _Patience yields focus,_ Keith thinks, suddenly desperate to see Shiro again. It’s been so long since he was with them.

When Kolivan sees Keith with his hair braided properly the next afternoon, he actually stops. Keith does his best to keep his eyes straight ahead as Kolivan stands in front of him.

A beat passes. Two.

Then Kolivan speaks, saying, “Good, little one.”

The cautious blooming in Keith’s chest feels a lot like acceptance.

— K —

When Keith is taught his tribal braid, the one important to his history and heritage, he’s on the space whale with his mother.

The two of them are sitting by the fire after dinner. Keith made the kill; Krolia was the one to prepare it. She showed him how to skin the creature and then slung it up over the flames until its aroma was good enough to overcome Keith’s queasiness. He’s used to fighting Galra droids and Altean robots, but the creatures that attack them on the space whale are a different kind of killing.

At least the wolf has finally decided to take a nap instead of demanding Keith’s attention to play, and so Keith is busy rubbing the wolf’s fluffy ears when Krolia speaks, saying, “I’m glad you know how to braid your hair.”

Keith glances up, touching the edges of it, self conscious. “I learnt when I joined the Blades.”

“Good,” Krolia says. “Did they teach you any other patterns?”

“Uh,” Keith says, fumbling. He’d much rather learn to kill the creatures without further thought than try to navigate conversation with his newfound mother. They’re still learning how to be in each other’s space, even if every time he looks at her, it feels as though he’s been with her his whole life. “Yeah, a few. Not my tribal one though. For obvious reasons.”

“I suppose.” Krolia nods, reaching back to touch the strand running down her back. “Still, it is good you know. All Galra should know their braids. We only ever cut our hair off when we are in mourning.”

Keith thinks of his Blade family that he’s lost. “Is that why yours is so short then?”

“I’ve lost so many of my brothers and sisters over the decaphoebs,” Krolia explains. “But since I left Earth…well, I suppose I never stopped grieving.”

Keith thinks about that thing that’s been haunting him, the one that found him in the shower all those years ago when he heard of the Kerberos mission failing and was so sure it was the end of everything. He thinks about before all those months in the desert losing his mind, when he sat on the Garrison rooftop after Shiro’s memorial and felt like he was being excavated.

“I cut my hair,” he says quietly. “When Shiro died.”

He wanted to do it when his Pop died too, but the foster agency took one look at him reaching for the scissors and though he wanted to slice his wrists instead, so they took everything remotely sharp from him. From then on, that was one of the conditions for the home: no sharps near Keith Kogane. It was a miracle he managed to keep his mother’s blade a secret.

“Why?”

Keith shrugs. “Because it felt right at the time. I didn’t question it, I just did it.”

He doesn’t tell her about the home. Not yet. It’s too soon for _that._

Krolia nods though, as if she can tell what he’s thinking. Keith wonders if it’s possible. He heard about a particular subrace of Galra having telepathic abilities.

“It’s in your blood,” she says.

“I guess so.”

Krolia’s eyes haven’t left him, which makes Keith even more determined to keep his gaze averted. The embers are orange and warm, rolling obediently when Keith nudges them with a stick.

“You talk about him a lot,” Krolia mentions. “Shiro.”

Keith sucks his lips between his teeth. They haven’t discussed Shiro properly, just like they haven’t talked about a lot of things in Keith’s life. There’s hardly any need to, when nearly every memory of Keith’s keeps flashing across the abyss, when Shiro shows up in so many of them.

But there’s no point in denying it. “Yeah. He’s always been there for me, so.”

Krolia gentles her tone. “It’s nice to have that kind of support.”

There’s more she isn’t telling him.

“Yeah.”

Keith pushes his hair out of his face again, cheeks warmed by the fire. He could add words, could talk about the hummingbird that comes alive in his chest at any mention of Shiro. He could say how every thought of Shiro makes it spread its wings inside of him and demand to be set free.

He always wants to.

“Will you let me teach you our tribe’s pattern?” Krolia says, even softer than before, as if she is afraid of rejection.

What does he have to lose?

Keith nods, unfolding himself from the other side of the fire to come closer. It’s cooler here, away from the flames. Keith lets it calm the redness of his cheeks as he undoes the current braid, unravelling it for Krolia to touch.

Krolia’s hands are deft, skilled. They move expertly as she talks. “The four braids stand for the pillars of our tribe: honor, integrity, loyalty and respect. When we join them together into one like so, it unites us.”

When it’s done, Krolia hands the braid to Keith for him to tie off.

“I’m sorry for leaving.”

Resentment simmers inside Keith’s chest. He spent years wanting to look like her, then years after hating her existence, hating how she left him and his Pop. It’s only since his time with Voltron, with the Blades, that he understands why she did.

“Knowledge or death,” Keith says softly, because it was in everything the Blades did.

They told him that during his trials, had it inscribed on the walls of their great hall. Keith saw it tattooed on Regris’ forearm when they were getting ready one morning, and later on, had gone with Lilli and Ailak to have the Marmora symbol inked onto his shoulder.

“I get it now,” Keith says. “I get why you had to leave.”

“It doesn’t make me regret it any less,” Krolia counters. “I missed so much of you, of your father.”

Thinking of his Pop feels like someone is peeling away the edges of him, like the weather-worn paint on the shack they called home. “You did what you thought was best.”

Part of Keith wishes she had left, wishes she hadn’t been peeled from that wrecked spaceship and nursed back to health by his Pop.

“Do you regret it?” He asks, aware that his voice is too small to hear properly over the flickering flames and thankful for it. Just because direct eye contact is supposed to be easing the way, it doesn’t mean it’s very effective.

“Of course not. I would never have had you, never be here now.”

“We're on a giant whale in the middle of space and being blasted with images from the past and future,” Keith points out. “It’s hardly the perfect set-up.”

“True.” Krolia’s fangs glint in the firelight.

Later on, after another onslaught of images, these ones too blurry for Keith to truly make sense of, Krolia touches his arm. Galra are tactile by nature. Keith feels the pull of it, wants to embrace it too.

So he does, carefully. Krolia accepts the press of his forehead to her shoulder.

The knot inside Keith unravels a little. Into the dark starry sky, he says,

“Thank you for teaching me.”

— K —

When Shiro comes back for the third time, it’s a special kind of agony. Special because they spent so many months together and apart. Special because Shiro saw him crying in the cockpit of Black after he left and he couldn’t do anything about it. Special because Keith missed Shiro with his entire heart but he never understood the whole truth.

It’s after Allura put Shiro back into the clone body, after Keith slammed his fist on the healing pod because Shiro was dying for real this time.

Just the two of them, in the depths of Black’s hold where Keith sleeps.

Shiro spent another few vargas in the healing pod at Allura’s request, and then Keith led him to the bed while he opted for the floor. Watching Shiro dress again reminded him of the time in the desert. He doesn’t think he will ever get used to the scars.

“What’s it like?” Shiro says, hushed.

“What’s what like?”

“This,” Shiro says, pointing to his heart. “This feeling of…I don’t know. Relief? Like you can breathe again.”

It’s true. Lotor is gone and they’re going home. It’s been a year since they all boarded Blue and jettisoned out into the war for the universe, and Keith wondered if he would ever see this day again.

But here they are.

“Surreal,” Keith says. “Like a dream.”

Shiro is still a dream too, lying above Keith. The floor is hard beneath Keith’s back but it helps to ground him, to tell him it’s real, that he hasn’t closed his eyes while piloting Black, that the Shiro next to him is the one he met all those years ago and watched the sunset with.

“A good one?” Shiro says tentatively.

Their comms are off. There’s no reason to be whispering when they won’t wake anyone else, but Keith likes the muted aspect of it, the softness of their conversation.

“A really good one,” Keith admits, tears pricking the corners of his eyes.

Shiro doesn’t tell him not to cry. He’s always believed in letting out emotion. That isn’t Keith, though. Keith bottles it up until he’s alone and then he explodes.

He thinks he might explode now. He might fracture into a million pieces after all the shit they’ve been through in the past year. They’ll never be able to gather the pieces of him. There will be too many to collect.

“Shiro?”

“Yeah?”

“I…I don’t think I can lose you again,” Keith confesses, voice thin and quiet and too brutally honest to accept. “Not again.”

Because it’s been three times now and Keith has been destroyed by each one.

“I’m here,” Shiro says, seeking out Keith’s hand and holding it. “I’ll always be here.”

Keith grips him back, desperately wanting to kiss him. _“Please.”_

— K —

When they come back to Earth, everything has changed. It’s been so much longer than a single year, something that gives Keith a headache if he tries to think about it too much. Pidge and Hunk give it a red hot crack, but there’s only so much science babble they can prattle off before they lose everyone in the room completely.

What hasn’t changed though, are Earth’s sunsets. They’re still glorious golds and pinks and fiery reds, and after a particularly shitty time spent trading barbs in the stuffy conference room, Keith escapes to it.

The deep crimson line upon the horizon looks like a blood spill.

Shiro finds him outside. He steps next to Keith, stands close enough that their shoulders touch each other.

“I’m fucking sick of the war, huh,” Keith remarks, sardonic and bratty and nothing like the leader he's become.

Let him have this, just once.

Shiro chuckles at his words. It's humourless, the kind of laugh that all of them seem to have inherited in their year of battles and space road trips and nearly dying more than once. It’s not a sound that Keith likes to hear.

“One final war,” Shiro says. “To end it all.”

“They said that in the first world war.”

“This is for the universe.”

“And then?” Keith spits. “Who are we fighting next?”

“Someone new, probably.”

Now it’s Keith’s turn to laugh like Shiro did. It’s dry and scrapes his tongue as it leaves him. “What are we doing, Shiro? What the fuck are we doing?”

“Surviving.”

“I want to live.”

“Soon, Keith.”

Keith pulls the band around his hair free. The wind picks it up to play, twisting it around him. Perhaps that makes Shiro jealous, because he takes the wind’s place, brushes through Keith’s fringe.

“You know,” he says, eyes roaming over Keith’s face. “That time you left to join the Blades was one of the loneliest.”

The memories were Kuron’s, but they belong to Shiro too.

“But when you came back,” Shiro continues, “and you stepped out of that pod with your hair braided like that…I missed you even more. And you were right in front of me.”

 _What are we doing, Shiro?_ Keith thinks as he ponders the contours of Shiro’s face. _What the fuck are we doing?_

He doesn’t speak it aloud. When Keith wished Shiro was sitting with him in the dust again, he isn’t sure that this is what he meant.

“I'm sorry.”

“That isn’t why I told you. I’m glad you got to find out more about who you are.”

 _I know who I am,_ Keith thinks. _I’m yours._

From life to death and beyond.

“I know it’s hard,” Shiro says, as if _he_ isn’t the one who should be complaining. “I know it seems like we barely get to catch our breath before we’re fighting again.”

Keith’s lungs constantly feel as though they are filled with water. He’s drowning from the inside out.

“But there are other things too, you know? Things that hopefully make all this worth it, make it hurt a little less.”

Shiro is still stroking his hair, almost subconsciously. Keith thinks of his Blade brothers and sisters, of his mother and Kolivan, of his paladin family. He thinks of losing Shiro and bringing him back.

It _does_ still hurt. That thing inside him still rattles his bones, demands to be let out.

“Kind of, yeah,” Keith says.

In the darkening sky, Keith gathers his hair and begins to wind it into a pattern again. He’s never done this before, but he saw Kolivan wear it during their battle against Zarkon, when they thought it would all be over.

Shiro watches. “What do the braids mean? You never did them before the Blades.”

“Everything,” Keith shrugs. “They’re like rituals, almost. This one is for war.”

It begins with three braids either side, meeting in the middle, flowing free at the bottom around his shoulders. Keith’s arms begin to ache on the fourth braid but he perseveres. Half of him wants Shiro to help. The other half reminds him that Shiro has to offer.

“It’s impressive,” Shiro notes. “Pretty, too.”

Keith’s face could be in the sun for an hour and yet it wouldn’t be as warm as it is now, especially when Shiro’s fingers touch his face.

“It’s a bitch on the arms,” Keith mutters.

“I’ll help you next time.”

Shiro’s smile is even _warmer_ than Keith’s face.

— K —

When Keith wakes after the last robeast, it feels like someone is shoving a hot poker straight down his throat every time he tries to swallow. Each breath tastes like blood.

And then he looks up and sees Shiro there in the doorway, flushed, breathless, beautiful.

“You’re awake,” Shiro says, striding into the room with all the confidence of the captain he is.

The first thing he does makes Keith close his eyes.

He strokes Keith’s face, runs his fingers down his cheek before brushing through Keith’s hair. “Hey there.” His voice is barely there.

“Hi,” Keith says just as softly, cracked open like an egg at the gentleness washing over him.

Shiro leans down. He’s close enough that Keith thinks this must have been what Shiro felt like when he woke up after the soul transfer; in that moment, when Shiro is leaning in, Keith wonders if he is going to be kissed.

Keith thought about kissing Shiro when the clone body finally accepted his soul. He wondered if he pressed his mouth to Shiro’s, would he be accepted? It hadn’t been the right moment though.

And maybe now isn’t the right one either, because Shiro simply pulls Keith close and runs his fingers through Keith’s hair.

Stars, he’s beautiful. Keith has seen so many galaxies and none of them will ever be as beautiful as Shiro, will never do the things to Keith that looking at Shiro does.

“You really had me worried there,” Shiro says with a laugh that is meant to be light and airy but feels heavy and sad.

“Figured it was my turn,” Keith says, because humour is their coping mechanism and always has been.

He must have really scared Shiro though, because Shiro just holds him tighter. “Please don’t do it again.”

Keith nuzzles Shiro’s ear. “Sorry.”

Shiro sags against him, which makes Keith want to pull and keep pulling until he can take the sadness and worry and anxiety from Shiro’s body and replace them with the warmth currently coursing through him.

“You look tired,” Keith says, smoothing his thumb to the soft skin under Shiro’s eyes.

“Feel like it,” Shiro agrees. “Feel like shit.”

“You look like it,” Keith says, protesting gently when Shiro’s hands press on his ribs. “Fuck, no, that hurts.”

“Sorry,” Shiro apologises. “Sorry.”

“Don’t,” Keith says. They apologise for too many things to each other, as if they’re the only ones cutting scars into each other instead of the war they’re part of. “Come here.”

“On the bed?”

“Is that a problem?”

“…No.”

It takes some convincing, some negotiating of limbs, but eventually Shiro is lying on the hospital bed next to Keith. He’s muscles and hard uniform lines next to Keith, until Keith strokes a hand down his arm, like he can soothe away the tension with a simple gesture. If only it were true. If only Shiro could stop frowning.

Shiro catches him up on the Atlas, and the Garrison, and the other paladins. Allura is already back on her feet, Altean genes serving her well. Lance and Pidge have been slower to bounce back but Pidge is usually in Hunk’s room surrounded by his family.

“I’m the last one, huh?” Keith says.

Sometime between Shiro joining him on the bed and now, Shiro has wound his hand into Keith’s hair again. It’s a comfort for him, Keith now realises. Before, in the desert, in space, he’d just presumed that Shiro would do it just because he could.

But it’s an anchor of sorts to Shiro, judging by the way he keeps his eyes trained on Keith’s hair.

“They wanted to cut your hair,” Shiro whispers, and something horrible lurches in Keith at the possibility of waking up that way. “You had a laceration on your temple extending into the hairline and they wanted it all shaved.” Shiro shakes his head. “Krolia wasn’t here but I said they couldn’t. Well, more like demanded. _Nicely._ I think.”

“You think?”

Shiro rolls his eyes. “I was polite, at least. But firm. Said it was your heritage, that it was worse than offensive to cut it off.”

Something much bigger than relief floods through Keith. He doesn't have another word for it though. Doesn't have words to express his gratitude apart from a croaked, “Thank you.”

“Always,” Shiro says, before he squishes his face further into the lumpy Garrison pillow. “You really had me worried,” he says again.

Keith wishes he had enough strength, enough resolve to lean in and brush his nose against Shiro’s like he wants to. Instead he finds Shiro’s hand and squeezes it. “I’m here now.”

Shiro continues to play with his hair. “Yeah.”

He still looks exhausted, but a little more human. A little less like Captain Shirogane and more like Shiro. Keith’s hand doesn’t move from Shiro’s, and Shiro doesn’t move either. The contact comforts both of them.

“Stay here,” Keith whispers when Shiro’s blinks begin to slow, when he starts to fall asleep.

Shiro opens his mouth, coming back to himself and acting like he can’t believe Keith is even suggesting it. But Keith squeezes Shiro’s hand, noting the twitching and barely audible whir of the mechanisms inside it.

“Stay,” he repeats, hoping Shiro won’t overthink it, hoping Shiro won’t tell him that he needs to rest and will be better off without Shiro hogging most of the bed. He would. Shiro’s always been a slave to his hero complex.

So he says, “Please?” because he knows Shiro is horrible at saying no to him, and because he’s desperate to have Shiro next to him. He doesn’t want him to leave.

“Keith,” Shiro says, before he runs a hand over his face, Altean blue glow upon his cheekbones and making him unfairly handsome despite the lack of sleep and Keith’s impending headache.

“Stay with me,” Keith says, knowing he’s already won, not wanting to risk it anyway.

“I shouldn't,” Shiro says, a last attempt.

But he stays.

— K —

When Keith does show Shiro how to braid his hair, it’s after the war, after peace is declared, after Keith thinks he’s going to go insane spending all his time within the infirmary. The other paladins try to make it better for him by invading his room every day but Keith wants to be outside, wants to feel the sun on his face and something other than the hospital floor underneath his feet.

The moment they give him the all clear, Shiro is there to claim him before the others can protest. The first thing he does is hand Keith his mother’s blade.

She’s offworld again, hunting out more pockets of Marmora with Kolivan. Keith misses her terribly.

“Thank you, Shiro,” Keith says softly, the inked symbol on his shoulder humming with the life force in his blade.

Shiro smiles at him like he’s the most wonderful sight. Keith finds that difficult to believe. He’s too skinny, too breathless from the bedrest.

“I wanted to take you somewhere,” Shiro says as Keith straps the blade to his leg. “Is that alright?”

Keith peeks up through his fringe. They’ve been through war together. “Don’t be stupid.”

His wounds are healing up into jagged scars and they protest as Keith pulls the sweater he was given over his head. It’s Shiro’s, oversized and warm and smelling like his deodorant. Shiro loops an arm around his neck and propels them forward.

It’s a surprise when Shiro takes him to Black, but she purrs happily when Keith touches her snout, opening her mouth for the two of them. Shiro pushes Keith into the pilot’s seat and Keith’s heart pounds at the image of Shiro above him, haloed by the console lights.

“I might have talked with Black.” Shiro leans down. “I might have already given her the coordinates, too.”

He’s still the best thing in Keith’s life.

“Where are we going?”

“Do you trust me?” Shiro says cryptically. Doesn’t he know Keith will follow him anywhere?

But maybe it doesn’t hurt to voice it, to say what Shiro tells him: “Always.”

They jet into space thanks to a wormhole from Allura and land in a field off-world. It’s bursting with pink blooms.

Keith doesn’t know what they’re called, but the aroma of them floods his senses the moment he steps out of Black. Everything is pink: the flowers, the sky. Keith grew up in the golden sands of the desert, and Olkari contained more greens than Keith had names for.

He’s never seen anything coloured like this before.

“Do you like it?” Shiro asks.

“It’s beautiful,” Keith says in wonder, trailing a hand over the petals.

“I’m glad,” Shiro says, beckoning for Keith to follow. They settle amongst the blooms and Shiro clears his throat. “I figured for your first time outside again, it might as well be somewhere like this place.”

“I really like it,” Keith says.

Shiro’s eyes are trained on the pink sky above them, on the cotton candy clouds. They make Keith think of his Blade brothers and sisters teaching him how to ask for candy. The air tastes like sugar.

“How did you hear about this place?”

“Atlas has a very generous database from the Castle of Lions. She suggested it.” Shiro plucks one of the blooms, contemplating it in his hands. “I just…You were drowning in those hospital sheets every time I visited and all I could think of was you floating in this field.”

“Is it as good as you hoped?” Keith tries for humour but he’s pretty sure he hits awkward instead.

“Better,” Shiro says, shifting closer. “So much better.”

Keith doesn’t have any words to say to that.

“Before the robeast,” Shiro says as he tugs on a lock of Keith’s hair, just like all that time ago in the desert when they were covered in stardust, “when you braided your hair and said it was for war…”

“What about it?”

“I said I’d help you out next time.”

He looks so earnest and Keith wants to kiss him. “Is it next time?”

“If you’ll let me,” Shiro whispers, pushing Keith’s hair behind his ear. Unlike all those other times, his hand does not leave Keith’s face. “What other braids are there?”

Keith resists the urge to squirm. “Everything. Birthdays, tribes.” Quietly: “Courting.”

“Would you show me those?”

“The courting ones?”

“Yeah. If that’s okay.”

This time Keith _does_ squirm, unable to look away from Shiro. He takes up his entire view. Keith never wants anything different. “Why would you want to know those ones?”

“Because you said you loved me and I never said it back.” Shiro’s other hand curls around Keith’s where they’re clasped tightly in his lap.

Panic hammers within Keith’s bones. “That was different.”

“It doesn’t change what you mean to me.”

Keith’s eyes burn. _“Shiro.”_

“It doesn’t,” Shiro insists, reaching up to cup his face. “You mean the world to me. You always have.”

Keith thinks of them on hoverbikes chasing the horizon, thinks of Shiro sitting with him in the bathtub and taking care of him. He thinks of sitting on that Garrison rooftop and slicing off his hair, of learning Galran with his Blade family, of finding his mother. He thinks of falling asleep next to Shiro, of the time Shiro slept in that hospital bed with him and warmed him all the way through.

He thinks of Shiro’s hands, comforting him, healing him, like oil on a stormy sea.

“I love you,” Keith says for the first time out loud, voice thick with a new emotion he doesn’t have a name for.

Whatever it is, it finds Shiro as well, because his eyes are welling up as he says, “I love you too. Will you teach me, Keith? Please?”

It takes a while for Keith to go from agreeing to doing as Shiro asks, and then it feels like he’s learning all over again himself as he twists one side and leaves the rest to cascade below. As far as braiding patterns go, they’re the simplest: two strands woven together and meeting in the middle. When Keith’s mother told him, she’d said the strands represented affection and loyalty.

Shiro keeps laughing breathlessly but he’s studious, copying Keith’s movements on the other side until he joins the two in the middle and ties it off. Keith wonders if his heartbeat matches Shiro’s, if they’re both galloping towards the horizon.

Shiro pushes a bloom into Keith’s hair and asks, “How did I do?” as if Keith has any idea of what he looks like without a mirror, as if it really matters.

Keith just winds his arms around Shiro’s neck and kisses him.

He kisses him until the thing inside him detaches from the wall of his chest, until the sweetness from Shiro’s mouth soaks up the sadness and hurt and longing inside him, until there’s nothing left but _happiness_ bursting outwards like a supernova.

 _“Keith,”_ Shiro says, and then he laughs, hauling Keith as close as he’ll go and kissing him thoroughly. “I love you,” he whispers between kisses, as he presses Keith into the field of flowers, as he winds his fingers into Keith’s hair and tugs, “I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bug me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/sepiacigarettes)!


End file.
